Conditions for Optimal Development in Adolescence

An Experiential Approach: A Special Issue of Applied Developmental Science

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Barbara Schneider

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781135065645
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Historia y teoría en psicología

Published in 2001, Conditions for Optimal Development in Adolescence is a valuable contribution to the field of Developmental Psychology.

Conditions for Optimal Development in Adolescence: An Experiential Approach

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Claremont Graduate University

Barbara Schneider
University of Chicago

For the social sciences to help improve the quality of life, it is necessary for research on human behavior to move out of the confines of the laboratory and the classroom. Experimental psychology—physiological, cognitive, and social—has enriched our understanding immensely. Tens of thousands of studies using paper-and-pencil tests with high school and college students have also yielded useful information. Yet research done in such settings tells us little about the processes that take place in everyday life—the small but complex psychological changes that may result, for instance, from walking in a park, meeting a friend after being alone, or watching TV after studying. Without an understanding of the phenomenology of everyday life, the human sciences lack a vital ingredient.

About 30 years ago, Csikszentmihalyi and a group of graduate students at the University of Chicago started an effort to develop a systematic phenomenology—a method that would make it possible to get reliable quantitative measures of the variation in experiential states as a person moved from morning to night in the daily round of activities. This eventually resulted in the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), which is basically a way to get “snapshots” of a person’s consciousness at random moments of the day by having the person describe his or her physical, cognitive, emotional, and motivational states whenever a pager signals. In typical studies, respondents give 7 to 8 responses each day for a week, for a total of 35 to 56 responses. In the Alfred P. Sloan Study of Youth and Social Development, on which several of the articles in this special issue are based, respondents gave a total of more than 27,000 responses at Time 1, and a comparable number at Time 2, 2 years later.

The ESM has resulted in several books and many articles describing such issues as the effects of tele vision viewing on a person’s life (Kubey & Csikszentmihalyi, 1990), the effects of energy consumption on happiness (Graef, Gianninno, & Csikszentmihalyi, 1981), and the differing ways in which husbands and wives experience the same interaction (Larson & Richards, 1994). If the method has not become universally used, it is no doubt due in large part to the fact that it requires more logistic preparation than most social science research entails. However, the effort one must invest in ESM research is paid back by the richness of the data it provides. An ESM database is like a virtual laboratory to which one can return time and time again, asking new questions and performing new analyses to obtain fresh answers without having to collect new data. The fact that in the long run it saves time and resources is only one of the advantages of the ESM. Although noting that the ESM, like other methodologies, has limitations, critics agree that this method “is useful in assessing human behavior and subjective emotional states and in understanding interpersonal relationships” (National Research Council, 2000, p. 42).

For the past decade, we have been using the ESM to study adolescent development (Csikszentmihalyi & Schneider, 2000; Schneider & Stevenson, 1999), and more recently to examine life in working families. The ESM in conjunction with other methods has provided us with a window into the psychological states and contexts that affect individual and family well-being. In this special issue, we present five articles that use the ESM to illustrate various possible applications of the method for studying both adolescents and families. Each study is quite different in the questions it addresses, but they all focus on adolescent development and, with the exception of Larson, Dworkin, and Gill-man’s (this issue) study, all use the same longitudinal sample of more than 800 adolescents who participated in the Alfred P. Sloan Study of Youth and Social Development. Although quite different in their approaches, these studies implicitly share a general set of assumptions. They look at development as a self-organizing process (e.g., Csikszentmihalyi & Rathunde, 1998; Deci & Ryan, 1985; Lemer, 1998) during which persons make choices motivated in part by the experiences that follow on their actions (Csikszentmihalyi & Massimini, 1985). If a child is bored by reading, it is unlikely that he or she will read much as an adult. A teenager who feels excited and happy only when hanging out with friends or when partying is unlikely to develop adult skills that require long hours of study and self-discipline. Thus, the quality of experience teenagers report gives a clue as to the kind of adults they are going to become.

The first article by Moneta, Schneider, and Csikszentmihalyi (this issue) employs multilevel models to address an old developmental question: How real is the Sturm und Drang of the teenage years? The study shows that the answer to this question is more complex than it is usually thought to be. Variables measuring self-esteem and locus of control show a steady linear improvement over the teenage years. Items measuring self-worth (e.g., living up to one’s expectations and feeling successful) indicate a clear concave-up trend, bottoming at ages 15 and 16. In other words, sixth-grade children start out with strongly positive feelings about self, but by eighth grade these feelings are less positive. They fall further by 10th grade and start moving upward again after that. Finally, variables measuring affective states (e.g., feeling good and feeling happy) follow a downward trend that does not show improvement by Grade 12.

The study also uncovers several variations around this basic trend. For instance, children of different ethnic groups and those from traditional versus single-parent and reconstituted families follow different experiential curves in their development. However, even within groups that exhibited less positive developmental trajectories, the effects were not uniform across different personality and experiential measures, nor were they permanent across adolescence. Moneta et al.’s findings suggest that the turmoil associated with adolescence may be overstated because it appears to vary across different measures and contexts.

The second article by Larson et al. (this issue) addresses how single-parent families help their children use time more constructively. As the number of children growing up in nontraditional families is approaching parity with those in traditional families, this question is becoming increasingly relevant for the well-being of families. Larson et al. found that single parenthood is not inevitably a hardship. Single-parent families that function well (i.e., that exercise firm parental control and establish family routines) have children who use their free time constructively. Mother’s employment does not appear to affect children’s use of time; rather, it is how mothers spend their free time. Mothers who read, attend religious services, or are involved in other constructive activities are likely to have children who engage in these activities.

In the next article, Rathunde (this issue) looks more closely at the effects of particular family processes on the development of optimal patterns of attention in children. Taking a cue from James (1890), Rathunde argues that an essential task for each person is to develop “undivided attention,” or the ability to get involved with everyday tasks in a way that is enjoyable and productive at the same time. In a longitudinal analysis, Rathunde finds that, over time, children who see their families as providing both challenge (i.e., expectations and opportunities for expressing individual excellence) and support (i.e., a context of warmth and caring) spend more of their day in conditions of undivided attention. Those whose families are only challenging are more likely to experience drudgery, and those who are only supported typically spend more time “fooling”—that is, more time on activities that are enjoyable but not productive. Rathunde’s findings point to the need for a balance between family challenge and support in helping adolescents realize their capacity for self-regulation and lifelong learning.

The next article by Hektner (this issue) draws on several of the same themes as the two previous ones. He uses structural equation modeling to estimate relationships between family and school contexts, individual characteristics, and subjective experiences. Hektner shows that growth-conducive experience (i.e., responses that indicate a person experiences intrinsic motivation, concentration, and goal-directedness while engaged in productive activities) remains quite stable as an individual trait over a 2-year period, although it does increase overall with time. Several environmental conditions show a strong relation with growth-conducive experiences when the two are measured at the same time, and the effects are still strong, directly or mediated through experience at Time 1 in a longitudinal analysis. Hektner’s analysis points to the importance of conducive environments both in the family and at school for promoting optimal development in adolescence.

The study by Asakawa (this issue) focuses on whether different ethnic groups experience life in different ways, and more specifically, whether Asian American adolescents report the same quality of experience as White adolescents when involved in studying and other productive activities. Asakawa shows that although both ethnic groups feel worse than usual when studying, the drop in quality of experience is greater for Whites. He believes that this is in part due to the fact that Asian American parents expect high academic achievement from their children, but leave them largely free to implement their academic goals. White parents, by contrast, expect less in the long run, but micromanage their children’s education. This elegant comparison shows how the ESM may be used to perform research that illuminates the inner experiences of people from very different cultural contexts, in a way that makes rigorous quantitative comparisons possible.

The articles included in this special issue contribute to the fund of information necessary to understand what enables young people to become self-directed, autonomous individuals in control of their own destinies. Perhaps their strength lies in their identification of parenting practices that promote adolescent well-being. Too often, parents assume that their parenting role ceases when their children learn to drive and that their primary responsibility in high school and later is helping their children select and pay for college. These articles open new conceptual areas for the study of family and school contexts and their influence on adolescent development.

Notes

We thank Lisa Hoogstra, a graduate student in human development at the University of Chicago, who served as editorial assistant for this special issue. Of course, our deepest thanks go to Richard Lemer who invited us to edit this special issue.

Requests for reprints should be sent to Barbara Schneider, University of Chicago, 1155 East 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637. E-mail: [email protected]

References

Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Massimini, F. (1985). On the psychological selection of bio-cultural information. New Ideas in Psychology, 3(2), 115-138.

Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Rathunde, K. (1998). The development of the person: An experiential perspective on the ontogenesis of psychological complexity. In W. Damon (Ed.-in-Chief) & R. M. Lemer (Vol. Ed.), Handbook of child psychology (5th ed.): Vol. 1. Theoretical models of human development (pp. 635-684). New York: Wiley.

Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Schneider, B. (2000). Becoming adult: How teenagers prepare for the world of work. New York: Basic Books.

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior. New York: Plenum.

Graef, R., Gianninno, S., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1981). Energy consumption in leisure and perceived happiness. In J. D. Claxton, C. D. Anderson, J. R. Brent Richie, & G. McDougall (Eds.), Consumer and energy consumption: International perspectives on research and policy options (pp. 47-55). New York: Praeger.

James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology. New York: Dover.

Kubey, R., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Television and the quality of life: How viewing shapes everyday experience. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Larson, R., & Richards, M. (1994). Divergent realities: The emotional lives of mothers, fathers, and adolescents. New York: Basic Books.

Lemer, R. M. (1998). Theories of human development: Contemporary perspectives. In W. Damon (Ed.-in-Chief) & R. M. Lemer (Vol. Ed.), Handbook of child psychology (5 th ed.): Vol. 1. Theoretical models of human development (pp. 1-24). New York: Wiley.

National Research Council. (2000). Time use measurement and research: Report of a workshop. Washington, DC: National Academy Press.

Schneider, B., & Stevenson, D. (1999). The ambitious generation: America’s teenagers motivated but directionless. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

A Longitudinal Study of the Self-Concept and Experiential Components of Self-Worth and Affect Across Adolescence

Giovanni B. Moneta
The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Barbara Schneider
University of Chicago

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Claremont Graduate University

Classic theories depict adolesce...